Pittsburgh Panthers @ Utah Utes Football Preview

Two programs have traveled many roads since their last meeting on the gridiron. Unfortunately for both the Utah Utes and the Pittsburgh Panthers, all those roads have led to heartbreak, pain and dissatisfaction.

It will be a reunion of ripped-apart football schools this Saturday afternoon, when Utah and Pitt face off in a midday matchup at Heinz Field in the Steel City. These teams opened the 2010 regular season, kicking off the opening Thursday night before the rest of college football played its week-one games the following Saturday. Utah stole an overtime win from Pitt, but even though the Panthers lost, there was a pervasive sense in the college football world that Utah - the same program that smacked around Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl - was the real deal. Therefore, Pittsburgh wasn't supposed to worry. Both teams were supposed to be headed for riches in the sport - Utah as a sustainer of recent glories, Pittsburgh an attainer of new fortune after a largely lost decade at the start of the 21st century.

Now, a good 13 and a half months since that showdown in Salt Lake City, the Utes and Panthers are playing for pride and little else. Neither program was able to use the 2010 season opener as a catapult to a better existence.

Utah seemed to have affirmed itself as a Mountain West Conference power through the first two months of 2010, but when the meat of the schedule greeted Coach Kyle Whittingham's team, the Utes collapsed. A blowout loss at home to TCU destroyed Utah's confidence; a fact confirmed a week later in a decisive loss against a mediocre Notre Dame squad. Utah was dreaming of a BCS bowl bid when November of 2010 began, but when the season ended, the Utes were relegated to the MAACO Bowl. As a stroke of good fortune, Utah drew Boise State in that event due to BSU's loss to Nevada in the next-to-last game of the regular season. However, when Utah played an extremely sloppy game and got steamrolled by Boise in the second half, a bowl game that began as an opportunity turned into a bitter pill.

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In 2011, the bad taste left by the conclusion of the 2010 season has only become even sourer. Utah quarterback Jordan Wynn failed to take command of his team last November, and it certainly seems as though the Utes' main signal caller carried the baggage of that experience into the new season. With Utah moving to the Pac-12 Conference from the Mountain West, expectations and hopes were higher than ever in Salt Lake City, but after half of the 2011 campaign has run its course, it's already clear that Utah has failed to measure up.

Wynn is out of the lineup with an injury suffered in a loss to Washington, but even when he was leading the Utes' offense, he didn't deliver the goods. In Utah's first-ever Pac-12 league games against USC and Washington, Wynn was consistent in only one respect: ineffectiveness. Scoring only 14 points in each of those contests represented a marked failure for an offense that has not improved since the crash-and-burn November of 2010. This is why Utah is already buried at the bottom of the Pac-12 South alongside Arizona.

For Pittsburgh, the outlook isn't much better. The Panthers, after losing to Utah last year, failed to win a conference championship against one of the weakest Big East fields in the two-decade history of the football version of the conference (basketball being a separate entity). Quarterback Tino Sunseri made one crushing mistake after another, essentially sealing the fate of Coach Dave Wannstedt, who was fired at the end of the regular season. This year, under new coach Todd Graham, Pittsburgh continues to lag behind the competition. The Panthers blew a 21-point second-half lead at Iowa and, after a pleasantly surprising blowout of South Florida, got whacked by Rutgers. Sunseri remains a mystery, and the Panthers' offense lacks week-to-week cohesion despite the presence of star running back Ray Graham, an NFL-er in the making.

Utah and Pittsburgh have traveled places since their last game. Yet, the Utes and Panthers really haven't gone anywhere at all. We'll see if this weekend's confrontation will push the winner in a truly positive direction.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer